


Incompatible

by Juliette1713



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 15:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19748374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliette1713/pseuds/Juliette1713
Summary: Pondering just whatmutually desirous incompatiblesmight look like, long term...





	Incompatible

Twenty five years ago now, they'd had the conversation, come up with the description of themselves - _mutually desirous incompatibles_. Three words, each of equal weight and import, each bringing something unique to what existed and would always exist between Joel Fleischman and Maggie O'Connell. 

The night they'd coined the term, they were - of course - fighting. Back then, it had been about Mike Monroe. Well, not really. They fought about him, but, deep down, it had been about them, like it always was - their inability to get along. The incompatible thing. And the fact that they couldn't just walk away from each other to solve it.

In all the time that had elapsed since then, the term hadn't outlived its usefulness. Just proven, time and time again, that it was the only description that fit what they had together. Even before they'd started dating - going as far back as the day they'd first met - there was a foundational problem with getting along with each other for long periods of time. Maybe they were too dissimilar - more likely, they were too much the same. Whatever it was had doomed them from the start. Even when they weren't fighting, they weren't able to get along. Someone always had to take to a contrary position. He wanted commitment, and she didn't. She wanted him to stay, and he wouldn't. She was open with her emotions, while he stayed closed off, recalcitrant. She couldn't stand routine, he needed sameness. In every way, they were what the other one wanted least.

And yet, incompatible was but one part of the definition. That same conflict, that same friction, the oppositional force also acted like a cosmic magnet, pulling them together. The thing which drove their desire. It wasn't just sexual, either - although, God knows that was part of it. Despite being what the other one wanted least, they never wanted anyone more than they wanted each other.

And so it wasn't a surprise that they found themselves deeply in love. They'd been in love for a long, long time - before their brief relationship, and for the many years that had elapsed after it ended. The unfortunate reality was that being in love changed nothing about how they felt. It wasn't going to work between them. They'd realized it, each of them individually, several times over the years, tamping down the feeling each time it emerged. That last night together in the tent in the Aleutians, though, Maggie had come as close to giving it voice that either of them ever would - _you meet the people you're supposed to meet._

They were destined for each other, plain and simple. Neither could imagine having not met the other. Mutually drawn, neither entirely complete without the other in their heart. Or in their life. That night in the tent, they'd reconciled and come together again, knowing they'd always need each other even though the incompatible part wouldn't ever go away. The desire part, as it always was, was both the fuel behind it and a reward for suffering the pain of what the mutual incompatability wrought. No one before and no one after - her before and after lists longer than his - would even come close. But it wasn't ever enough to overcome their incompatibility.

That night together in the tent was supposed to be a goodbye - they'd both felt the end upon them and had meant it as a goodbye. As he stood there and chose New York just as she chose Cicely, it felt like all there was left was goodbye. His postcard was the next goodbye - finality, _New York is a state of mind_ , meant to parallel Soapy's words - and Maggie's feelings - regarding Alaska as a state of mind. It wasn't and wouldn't ever be enough for him. 

Her letter weeks later was another goodbye - she knew he wouldn't be able to move on completely without hearing that she'd started to, since he'd been the one who left. His call weeks after that was meant as yet another in now a long series of endings - only to tell her he'd gotten on with a practice - endocrinology, like he'd wanted - and that he'd be just fine. She called back only to fill him in on the epilogue to their story - that his signature, the start to her mayoral run, had ended with her winning. When that 'quick call' lasted for three hours, she started to worry that these calls were anything but goodbye. Especially when she found herself consciously choosing not to tell him about Chris.

Denver came after that - and after Chris. It didn't work between them, for different reasons than it hadn't worked with Joel. She was infinitely more compatible with Chris - in temperament, in worldview, in attitude, in interests - than she'd ever been with Joel. But she knew early on she'd never feel for Chris what she had with Joel. Back then, she thought that it meant the guy she could feel that way for must still be out there. So she wanted to keep searching. She and Chris stayed friends.

When Joel asked her to meet him in Denver, where he'd be for a medical conference late that summer, she worried that their goodbyes had finally backslid so far that they were back to hello again. They spent the week together, and it had been great, at first. She felt like she was finally whole again...until the incompatibility reared its head. He seemed frustrated; he said he'd missed her so badly he'd just had to see her, but now a few days into being with her again, he needed out. It was a relief to her to hear that he felt the same strange way she did. And so she thought Denver was finally goodbye. 

Until he called again. He said it was to wish her a quick happy birthday, but they'd talked for hours, late into his night, reminiscing together, talking about life. She hung up and knew then it wasn't goodbye this time. She didn't mention Mark. And he didn't mention Leah. He did mention Chicago. Where she found herself spending another week with him - a week that ended much like the first had. 

The next time they met, in her hometown of Detroit, Mark and Leah were history, replaced by Sarah and Brett. They finally told each other about their relationships this time, which both thought meant for certain it was goodbye at long last. Even so, he'd mentioned a convention in San Francisco in December, knowing he'd see her waiting for him at the hotel bar. That time, things were great between them because they both knew going in it wasn't goodbye, but that it definitely did not mean they were getting back together. It just _was_.

Brett, too, proved impermanent - he, with Chris, and Mark had shown that Maggie's curse was well and truly over. She spent the time after ending things with him happily single, making meeting Joel less fraught with guilt than their prior meetings had been for her. They met next in Minneapolis, in February. Bitterly cold and snowy. Not that it mattered - they spent the week, as with most of their meetings, together in his hotel room - talking, ordering in food, making love, just being together. At the end of the week, he told her, after hesitating, that he and Sarah were getting married. She told him she was happy for him and really meant it. She wasn't surprised by how she felt - just that he didn't seem to feel guilty. And that when they parted ways again, that even marriage didn't seem to mean it was goodbye.

He and Sarah married in April, and Maggie met John in May. Even so, she and Joel met in Seattle in June; it was the closest he'd come to Alaska since he'd left more than a year ago. And the longest they'd ever gone without seeing each other.

"You look good, Fleischman," she said, hopping down from the bar stool where she'd been waiting. "Hair's short."

"Yeah, well. I can't look like a scraggly college kid the rest of my life. Long hair is passe, out of fashion, or so I'm told." She looked down to his left hand, his ring reflecting the bright light shining behind the bar, before meeting his eye again.

"Well, she has good taste - I'll say that much. You're dressed much better than when you lived out here. She pick that shirt, too?"

His eyes looked guilty as he cast them down to check what he was wearing. The look was still there when his eyes met hers again before he put his arms around her, pulling her close. She knew it wasn't that he felt guilty about what he was doing to Sarah, but that Sarah's presence in his life felt to him like a betrayal of Maggie. The way she felt about John sometimes. "Uh...yeah."

"Looks good on you." She kissed him gently and smiled. "How's married life?"

"Good." He smiled back at her, his eyes crinkling happily at the corners. "How's...what's his name?"

"John. And also good." She pulled him closer and leaned in to whisper into his ear, "I've missed you."

"You too, O'Connell," he murmured against her neck, kissing her softly below her ear. "You wanna...get dinner first or..."

"No."

They'd gotten as far as the elevator before they couldn't keep themselves apart, pulling frantically at each others' clothes, lips locked together. They stumbled together down the hallway, and he quickly had her up against the door to his room, kissing her while fumbling with the lock with one hand and cupping her breast under her shirt with his other. They fell through the door as it opened and barely made it to his bed. Their first time after being apart was always that way.

Afterwards, they laid together, sharing the pizza they'd ordered - wildly different toppings on each half, such as was their custom - another thing on which they could never agree. They made love again before they fell asleep, slowly this time, as he kissed her eyelashes, collarbone, forehead, shoulders, and lips reverently. Sarah's call woke them the next morning, and he took it in bed with his arm around Maggie, her head against his chest, hair tickling his neck. Somehow it never felt like cheating to him. To either of them.

As the years went by, they continued to meet every few months, whenever they could. They couldn't keep up their phone calls as easily, although with some planning, they'd found ways for her to call on nights he'd be 'working late' at his office. Medical conferences proved an easy excuse for time away from New York - time to meet Maggie for those few days they needed with each other before once again not saying goodbye.

John eventually disappeared, as did a few others after him. Joel and Sarah, though, happily celebrated milestone after milestone together - their first anniversary, Joel's partnership in the practice, their first home. David and Eli were born not long after that - twins, both spitting images of their father. He'd chosen the name Eli, which meant ascendant, thinking of Maggie and the little plane that he'd spent so much time in with her. 

"You make beautiful babies, Fleischman," she said, smiling, when during one meeting he showed her the pictures he always carried with him. "They both have your eyes."

"They have her temperament, though. Thankfully." He pulled her close and kissed her, pictures carefully set aside. "You hate babies, though."

"You did once, too." She smiled as they held each other, both wondering the same thing - what it would have been like if they weren't them, if it weren't for that incompatible thing. She started to ask the question, "Do you ever think about...nah, nevermind."

"Okay." He kissed her through her hair and murmured, "But yeah. I do..." They never talked about it again.

It never felt strange, somehow, for either of them to have carried on like this all this time - living the lives they each wanted to, independent of the other one. The lives that they weren't ever going to have lived together. Joel was committed to his job, first and foremost, but still proved a doting and caring father, a good husband, and provider for his family, living in Brooklyn like he wanted. Maggie stayed in Cicely, of course, staying active with flying and slowly taking over for Maurice as he aged, the town's self-appointed improver. She never married, never even came close to settling down with anyone on a permanent basis, though she'd had several romances blossom and fade as time went on. She didn't want permanency, of course. And none of them did she love like she loved Joel. They talked frequently and saw each other every few months in carefully orchestrated meetings. By then, they both knew that they would always carry on this way, in some manner or other. They were the only ones who knew, never discussing it with anyone else. Because who the hell would ever understand any of it? It only made sense to them.

Months gave way to years and then to decades. Joel's practice had made him rich early on, which gave him the freedom to retire early, once his boys had started college. Yale and Harvard, both pre-med, because apples never fall terribly far from their trees. With the children grown and gone and Joel home every day, he and Sarah realized their children and their home were what they had most in common. They amicably divorced twenty years to the day after they'd married. Joel always appreciated symmetry. Maybe that appreciation for things ending as they began is part of what prompted him to return to Cicely in the end. He knew what the other part was.

They knew enough to know it wouldn't ever work between them, even now, even after all these years, so his proximity didn't change their approach. They kept living their lives individually, sometimes side by side and nearer to each other than before, but they never came together and stayed that way. He only lived in Cicely in the summers, unable as always to bear the harsh and seemingly unending winters, which he spent back in the City, nearer to his mother and his boys.

Maggie rented him his old cabin the summers when he returned, when its owner departed Cicely for family in Los Angeles. The house, like Cicely itself, had changed over the years; it had been expanded and updated, but something about it felt like home in a way that New York never completely did. In that same incomplete way that Maggie completed him.

When he was there, they'd see each other in town and talk, eat dinners together at the Brick sometimes, but their time together kept that same episodic schedule it always had. She'd stay with him for a few days and then go about her life, as would he with his, until they felt each other's pull again. He had mellowed and matured enough to appreciate the solitude in Alaska, and he'd even come to enjoy fishing. He spent his time there with friends - Ed, Chris, Marilyn - and newcomers. He volunteered around the state in clinics and filled his other days doing things that made him happy - reading, doing the Times crossword on his porch with his feet up and a coffee on the table next to him. She'd fly him to Anchorage for his cross country flights home each October, just as she'd be there waiting for him each April when he returned. 

They stood now at the gate, as they did each autumn when he left, holding each other close as they waited for the boarding announcement, hoping as they always did that time would slow down for a bit and that they'd have a little longer together. They never said I love you, only because they both knew that they did and that it didn't need to be said.

He kissed her when they called for passengers to line up, and she smiled at him in that enigmatic way that she had.

"Take care of yourself, Fleischman. Phoenix in December, right?"

"Yeah. And you, too, O'Connell. I'll call you, okay?"

She watched him disappear down the jetway, recalling now that "last" night they'd spent together in the tent and her revelation then. They had met the person they were supposed to meet in each other, but she understood now in her mid fifties what she hadn't in her young thirties. Life didn't guarantee perfection, or happy endings - just certainty, just fate. They'd long ago given up trying to understand the why of it all - what made sense about the fierce draw they both felt for someone they couldn't be with. All they knew was that whatever it was kept bringing them together but would always keep them apart. _Mutually desirous incompatibles,_ she recalled them agreeing on, almost gleefully, years younger than now - too young then to fully understand just how deeply that notion would be threaded through the rest of their lives. And that it would be the thing that kept them from ever saying goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd try my hand at a less happy ending...I like the happy ones best, but I could totally see this happening with them, they're both so nuts. :)


End file.
